A still from the Amul video featuring Neerja Bhanot
Amul is celebrating the success of the film
Neerja, based on the life of national hero Neerja Bhanot, by releasing an Eighties ad for a chocolate brand which had featured the 23-year-old. Neerja Bhanot, the flight attendant who was killed in the 1986 hijacking of a Pan Am flight, is played by actress Sonam Kapoor in the Ram Madhvani-directed film. (Also Read:
Movie Review: Neerja)
"I am too old for tricycles, too young to be a pilot," a young boy tells Neerja in the ad. "But you're just right for Amul chocolate," a smiling Neerja Bhanot, who also pursued a career in modelling, quips.
Neerja opened to widespread acclaim last Friday. NDTV's Saibal Chatterjee, who gave it a 4-star rating said in his review of the film, "Sonam is of course the lynchpin. Even when pushed well out of her comfort zone, she is completely convincing and real as the bubbly youngster with nerves of steel."
A recording of an in-flight announcement made by the real Neerja Bhanot was recently released on YouTube by the makers of the movie.
Sonam, who had tweeted the video, had described it as the 'voice of courage.'
Ms Bhanot died after valiantly helping save 359 lives on board Pan Am Flight 73 which was hijacked at Karachi. She was the first civilian and the youngest person to receive the Ashok Chakra, India's highest peacetime gallantry award.
Neerja, co-produced by photographer Atul Kasbekar, co-stars Shabana Azmi as the slain stewardess' mother Rama Bhanot. Composer Shekhar Ravjiani makes his acting debut in the film.